1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a workflow construction apparatus that is applied for example to a MFP (Multi Function Peripheral) that is a multifunctional digital image forming apparatus, a workflow construction method, and a recording medium having a workflow construction program recorded therein to make a computer execute workflow construction processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
A workflow construction apparatus that constructs a workflow composed of a plurality of unit processes has been known for some time. With the conventional workflow construction apparatus, every time a workflow is constructed by a user, the workflow is stored in a memory with all the information including settings of unit processes that are components of the workflow.
However, if all the information of the respective workflows is stored in the memory by workflows, it is an issue that recording capacity of the memory is quite limited to record such a large amount of accumulated data.
More specifically, workflows created by users tend to include some common unit processes in many cases. If all the information should be stored in the memory by workflows, the duplicated settings of unit processes for different workflows are stored separately in the memory. Thus, a large amount of accumulated data would possibly surpass recording capacity of the memory.
Further, using the memory carrying all the information by workflows, every time a new workflow is needed to be constructed, users bother to construct a new whole workflow or call up an existing workflow to modify simply by replacing or adding some unit processes of the workflow. Thus, construction operations cannot be performed efficiently.
It is an art disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-263541, that a difference between a new scenario and a reusable original scenario preliminarily created is picked up, and the new scenario is defined by adding a description that is the difference, to the original scenario, when a chronological flow of operation process is defined as a scenario that is composed of a series of scenes.
However, since the difference is simply added to the original scenario according to the art disclosed in the publication above, the art cannot resolve the issues that arise when workflows are constructed, decreased available memory due to such a large amount of data and inefficient workflow construction operations.
The description herein of advantages and disadvantages of various features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed in other publications is in no way intended to limit the present invention. Indeed, certain features of the invention may be capable of overcoming certain disadvantages, while still retaining some or all of the features, embodiments, methods, and apparatus disclosed therein.